Ben Donich and The Brack

Rest and Be Thankful and Loch Restil

The Brack in Cloud from Ben Donich

Beinn Luibhean, Beinn Ime and The Cobbler from The Brack

The Brack

Wednesday 26 October, 2011
1135m ascent, 13 km, 4hrs 53m

Ben Donich     847m      1hr   18mins
The Brack        787m      3hrs 28mins

Some days, you just do it because you need to get into the hills. Today was such a day, the odd flicker of blue was more than had been seen for a week and the Corbetts in Glen Croe had been niggling me for a while. I had gone over the top of the Brack in the Karrimor Mountain Marathon (KIMM) in 1991 but I had no recall whether that included the summit; we were close to the finish line at Ardgarten and I was not collecting Corbetts at the time.  These hills to the southwest of the Rest and Be Thankful are in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, which to my mind was and remains a mistake. I had argued this in a paper in 2001 just before the national park was established. I persuaded the Scottish Government to include Killin in the National Park but the Argyll part was added for political reasons. Argyll has an abundance of splendid coastal and mountain scenery but this is not the finest. It has created a National Park which is imbalanced with the intrinsic qualities of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs diluted by the western extension of the park.

I had decided to start at the Rest and Be Thankful, which would mean a long walk back up Glen Croe after climbing the Brack but the ridge up to Ben Donich looked like a good route.   I parked next to a sprightly-looking 80-year-old who was just off to climb Ben Donich, he still walked the hills three times a week and had that glow of satisfaction that comes from being fit and mentally alert.  He had also done the 1991 KIMM when sixty which meant he must have been a tough competitor, most folk tend to give it up by the time they are in their forties by which time two days of running around wet hills and camping overnight are thought as a discomfort, not an adventure. He had seven or eight minutes start on me and I never did catch him although he was not far ahead when he disappeared into the mist.  It was a beautiful walk up the ridge although views were limited as the clouds rolled in.  I found the trig point had a break for some fruit and to reflect on the circularity of life. I hoped that I would still be doing this sort of thing in twenty years.

Ben Donich is a massive hill skirted by forestry plantations that make it difficult to access.  There are four ridges to all parts of the compass, and some steep cliffs to the northwest that I happened upon when looking for the summit in the mist.  There is also a tricky rocky crevasse to cross about a hundred metres in height below the summit.  I took a compass bearing on leaving the summit and descended down the east ridge, there were quite a few rock outcrops to circumnavigate. The ground conditions were not easy: saturated with water, slippy rocks and that feeling you get when an OS map is randomly generated - the contours must have been cut and pasted from somewhere else. Eventually, the forestry plantations along the Donich Water came into view and the sound of chainsaws and a helicopter moving equipment convinced me I was in the right location.

I arrived at the Bealach Dubh-lic, climbed a fence and then started on the viciously steep slope to The Brack by its northwest ridge.  It was another 400 metres of climbing with no compensating features although the view north to the Arrochar Alps appeared briefly before a heavy downpour turned out the light. 45 minutes later I came upon the trig point, which on days like this is a relief but also a vast disappointment; had I really knocked my pan in to see another of these contraptions? During this ascent all my waterproofs were donned and, on the descent by more or less the same route, I was entertained by the complete range of precipitation: rain, sleet and hail. By the time I had dropped to 500 metres a shaft of sunlight lit up Glen Croe. I crossed the bealach and followed some white sticks across a quagmire until they reached the top of the aforestation and a path took me down to the track.  After that, there were just 3 kilometres of walking up the forestry track to the top of the Rest and Be Thankful. The dense forestation of spruce trees made me reflect that Glen Croe definitely should not be in the National Park.